NEW PALESTINE — It’s always a fierce competition anytime the high school classes compete against one another. With the coveted New Palestine High School Class Cup 2022 back on the line this year, the competition was even more intense.
A couple of years ago, NPHS social studies teacher Mitch Burk pulled a page from the Harry Potter book series where all the houses of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry compete for the top house award each year. Burk decided to try the idea — minus any spells and trickery — to have a friendly competition between the classes at NPHS to help generate school enthusiasm and student participation.
“Since the school was already doing all kinds of good things, I thought what if we awarded points every time we had something going on,” Burk said. “I pitched it to our admin team in 2019, and they said run with it.”
Unfortunately, COVID slowed the idea in 2020 when the seniors won the cup and again in 2021 where they did not have a winner. However, this year the race for the NPHS Class Cup was on once again.
“We were looking for the top class — the most spirited, enthusiastic and most giving,” Burk said.
This year’s best bunch, the NPHS juniors, earned a trip to Indianapolis to see the Indians play baseball. The junior class of 2023 visited downtown and saw a game late last week as a way to celebrate.
Junior A.J. Reierson said his biggest highlight in the chase for the Class Cup was the comeback the juniors had at the end to beat the freshmen.
“It made the Indians game feel a lot better knowing that we beat everyone,” he said.
Reierson was one of the students who enjoyed getting involved in every kind of school activity due to his competitive nature.
“I wanted to be involved with everything going on, and I also hate losing, and knowing that I can earn my grade points by showing up to these events motivated me to participate,” he said.
The events where points could be earned included multiple homecoming activities in fall and winter, like a powder-puff football and a volleyball tournament. Attendance at show choir, basketball and volleyball events were awarded with points. Students earned points at different canned food drives; a recycling drive and during multiple spirit weeks. Students also earned points for attendance to the Riley Dance Marathon; a halftime challenge at the basketball games and going to the school’s first winter semi-formal. Every event was ranked 1st to 4th place with 1st place receiving 40 points, 2nd getting 30, and so on.
“This year’s contest was extremely close,” Burk said. “It came down to the juniors and the freshmen, with the last month determining the winner.”
The week before spring break was college spirit week, and that’s where the juniors pulled away for the win, earning a total of 510 points. The freshmen finished with 500.
“We had almost 50% of the entire school building wearing college gear that day,” Burk said. “If you can get 600 high school students to do anything at the same time, that shows that they’re all in.”
Burk is pleased when he thinks back to the premise of wanting to see more student involvement and attendance at school events. He noticed when he was hired in 2017 there were many great things going on at the school, but he didn’t feel a whole lot of student enthusiasm or participation.
“I just thought there were so many neat things going on in athletics and in the arts where we needed to celebrate the students more and to get the kids really involved in supporting each other,” Burk said.
Burk, who enjoyed reading the Harry Potter book series, had that “aha” moment when he started to think of ways to get more students involved in attending and taking part in school events.
“I thought, what if we could have something at the end of the year where we could reward the class that pulled it off or showed the most support,” Burk said. “The kids liked the idea too. They grabbed it and went wild.”
Over 200 students got to take part in the day of fun at the Indians game. Burk is working hard to offer up an even bigger reward in the future with perhaps a trip to Kings Island on the line next year.
New Palestine High School Class Cup
Junior Class 510 points
Freshman Class 500 points
Senior Class 400 points
Sophomore Class 300 points
Class Cup 2022 participation
– 450 boxed food items collected in a day food drive & 560 items in separate food drive
– 100 students attend first Riley Dance Marathon, $12,000 raised
– 15 trash bags of recycling collected in one week
– 3 to 4 times as many students participating in dress up days as in the past
